Meaning of Toast MPEG1 Encoder Options Image and Mode ?

[PeterS-Oz]

Toast Titanium comes with a MPEG1 Encoder which is needed to create a Video CD, which is something that Toast can do for you.

The Encoder may be started in a few different ways. In most cases there is an opportunity to specify some options before encoding starts. There are three options, each with a small number of discrete options:

Format: NTSC (29.97 fps) or PAL (25 fps)
Image: Fit or Crop or Fill
Mode: Normal or Faster or Better

I understand the Format option. And if I was not such a newbie I guess I might understand the Image and Mode options and the meanings of the different values, but I do not.

Does anyone have a good understanding of the Image and Mode options and the values that can be selected ?

I believe that Roxio should provide information on these options in their product documentation or help pages or web site. But I certainly cannot find it !

Another question - when the Toast Video CD encoder is selected during an export from iMovie the the Image and Mode options cannot be set, in which case what is the effective value for these options ?

I have Mac OS X 10.1.5
I have iMovie 2.1.1
I have Quicktime Pro V6.0.2

Thanks
PeterS-Oz

[elreeko]

The image values simply determine whether or not you would like your movie to all fit in the final frame or whether you would prefer to have image cropped. In many cases movies are set up as widescreen. If you choose fit quicktime would simply fit the movie inside the frame in its proper proportions. Because vcds require a specific frame size black bars would be generated in order to fill in the rest of the frame. Even if a movie is just a bit more widescreen than television's standard 4:3 setting you will get small black bars. Croping on the other hand takes the center piece of your movie and fills the frame with it. Unfortunately in this setting you loss the edges of your movie, but some people (silly ones I must say - unless they have really small tvs) do not like widescreen movies.

I don't fully understand the crop and fit setting (mainly because I want to see everything in a shot and usually use the fit setting for all of my movies)

The quality settings simply let you choose a quality for your final movie. If you are like most of us you want as high a quality as possible and choose better. The con of this setting is that is takes longer to convert the file, but that is the price of quality. I usually use this setting on pal movies which are much higher quality than ntsc movies so that I can get the absolute best quality possible.

Hope this helps